Why the media lies about guns

Tracey Wilson is the VP of Public Relations for the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights.

The public’s trust in media has deteriorated in recent years, and with good reason. Speaking with my own mother this morning, we were discussing how people of my age or older knew a time when “the news” was where people got their information. We would gather around the television or radio and listen to a voice of authority provide us the details of the world’s goings on. You could trust this person, to deliver the facts, with no bias or narrative–just straight, simple facts on which you could form your own opinion on the issues facing you and your family.

Those days are long gone and I fear they may never return. We live in the most technologically advanced era in history, with immediate access to a variety of instantly available mainstream media news sources. They saturate us with information and stories, but they are no longer delivered the same. Each story is crafted around a (usually) left-leaning perspective guided by social justice and selective outrage. This has never been more apparent than with the story of the church shooting in Texas, abruptly stopped by an armed parishioner–the exact kind of story that the left hates. The old adage “a good guy with a gun” became literally that. Although this story is not altogether unique as armed civilians save more lives on average than bad guys with guns take according to the CDC. The problem is it doesn’t make the same kind of sexy headlines a mass shooting makes. Nor does it feed into the anti-gun agenda the left is ramming down our throats.

71 year old Jack Wilson did something amazing this week in that little church in Texas and the media just couldn’t help themselves but to slander it in the most obvious way. Both Global News and the National Post ran stories with literal lies for headlines, confusing (intentionally?) the violent gunman and the Texan hero. Public outrage ensued over the false headlines, and eventually corrections were posted. Global chose to leave the lies up while publishing an entirely new tweet and Facebook post with the correction within. Why? Why not immediately remove the story you know is wrong?

It is becoming increasingly more difficult to ignore this kind of blatant bias. The manufactured hysteria over legal gun ownership fuels the hatred for gun owners and this is incredibly wrong. Another great example of this left-leaning hatred for legal gun owners was back in August of 2019 when Global Montreal published on their official Facebook account a terribly crude and inappropriate caption to an article trying to draw a link between legal gun ownership and increased crime. The public was shocked and outraged at the use of foul language which resulted in a simple apology from the news outlet claiming an ex employee somehow still had access to post at Global. To believe a syndicated news outlet like Global has no social media security is to be a fool. A simple password change would have prevented this. An even bigger question is how long did this employee work there, churning out his/her bias and hate for Canada’s most vetted citizens?

So why do mainstream media continue to do this, in spite of being caught and called out every single time? Money–the root of all evil as they say. Our media outlets are in a predicament. The Liberal government has unwisely chosen to fund mainstream media with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Our media is on corporate welfare, dependant on the Liberals to survive. This makes it impossible to be unbiased and this is apparent in every pre-election article about CPC Leader Andrew Scheer, every gun-related article, every rabidly left editorial published and the list goes on. Our own PM was riddled with scandals the entire course of his reign so far and every single abomination is excused, dissected and may as well be captioned “nothing to see here”.

The only “filter” Canadians have to try and disseminate the false news out of our once reliable mainstream media is each other, and the smaller, under-funded independent outlets like the one you’re reading right now. For a country ruled by leftists who claim to be so woke, we are galloping down the Orwellian rabbit hole at lightning speed. Support your independent media and continue to demand honest, reliable accounting of facts from the mainstream. The truth is out there. And the truth is a gun toting senior from Texas prevented what could have easily been another tragic mass shooting and it is incumbent on us to acknowledge that.